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Comcast’s machineQ taps into smart city water management

The machineQ and Neptune solution enables utilities and municipalities to evolve from manual metering systems, which often require employees to visit hard-to-reach places, to a wireless system in which data is remotely monitored via the cloud. (machineQ)

Comcast’s IoT services unit for the enterprise market, machineQ, has announced a partnership with water tech company Neptune Technology Group to provide advanced water metering for smart cities.

Under the partnership, which is already in operation, Neptune’s LoRa-enabled water meters and sensors will tap into machineQ’s LoRaWAN network.

This will allow municipalities to gather data about their infrastructure and sustainability efforts.

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The solution enables utilities and municipalities to evolve from manual metering systems, which often require employees to visit hard-to-reach places, to a wireless system in which data is remotely monitored via the cloud.

“The LoRa technology is operating seamlessly with the system we have deployed,” said Jason Jay, programs manager for Columbus (Georgia) Water Works, in a statement.

“It’s designed to provide us with the meter data we require to effectively manage our system without having to install or maintain the network, allowing our people to focus on their day to day critical functions,” added Kevin Mascaro, director of finance for Western Municipal Water District in Riverside, California. The utility is deploying Neptune’s R900 technology combined with the machineQ network.

Comcast first announced machineQ in 2016 as trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago, and in 2017 began rolling out the LoRa-based service to businesses and municipalities in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

“Cities and municipalities are no longer delaying their smart city programs based on the promise of future network technologies because they see the tremendous cost savings and efficiencies they can realize today from a broad range of existing IoT solutions, from trusted providers like Neptune, that are capable of leveraging the machineQ cloud-based IoT network and platform services,” said Alex Khorram, general manager of machineQ. “We can deploy and manage a dense IoT network tailored to the unique needs of any organization very efficiently, so they can focus their resources delivering the best service possible to their end customers.”